On the afternoon of Nov. 23, a transformer failure left Harbin Hall, among other nearby academic buildings, without power. The Office of Facilities Management did not successfully restore power until 14 hours later, at 2 a.m., to Harbin, the last of the affected buildings. The Office of Residential Living did not notify residents about when power would be restored three hours into the incident, and only conveyed the reasons behind the outage two days after.
The power outage incident is, unfortunately, not an isolated case. In the last year, the Office of Facilities Management has inadequately addressed many major facilities issues. For example, in Jan. 2014, some LXR residents went multiple days without hot water. Additionally, over a two-week period from Sept. to Oct. 2013, at least nine false fire alarms plagued the Southwest Quad, which often dragged students from their beds at all hours of the night, significantly disrupting their sleep and study schedules. The cause of the false alarms remained a mystery for weeks to Facilities Management, and the repairs took even longer.
The underlying cause of these inefficient repairs remains unclear. Perhaps the Office of Facilities Management is understaffed, overwhelmed, ill-equipped, or simply suffers from a dysfunctional organizational culture. Whatever the reasons might be, considering that students pay room and board costs well above the national average, the office’s failure to address residential concerns in a timely manner is completely unacceptable.
To better serve the student population, the office must undergo major changes in the way it handles student concerns. In particular, the Office of Facilities Management needs to create a better process for addressing emergency and after-hours calls. After all, facilities incidents such as transformer failures and blocked apartment toilets can happen at any hour of the day. According to the Facilities Management website, however, if a student encounters a facilities problem after hours, they should report it to the Department of Public Safety. This is problematic because DPS handles many other matters throughout the night, including crime reports, room lockouts, and SafeRides. As a result, they may classify facilities concerns as a lower priority than campus safety and might not address them immediately. The university needs to dedicate personnel specifically tasked with addressing emergencies regarding facilities instead of delegating such functions to DPS.
Few juniors, if given a choice, would elect to remain in university housing and suffer another year’s worth of unreliable living facilities. If the university insists on using the third year housing requirement to force students to live in campus housing to fulfill the 2010 Campus Plan Terms, at the very least, it should keep campus housing a well-maintained and comfortable living arrangement. Up to this point, the Office of Facilities Management has failed to consistently uphold this standard. Streamlining its reporting system, better allocating its personnel, and investing in the campus’ existing infrastructure rather than planning and constructing new facilities will surely stop making students’ housing experiences into a semester-long headache.
